"MARRIED" GETS A WARM RECEPTION
dir: Jonathan Demme
starring: Anne Hathaway, Rosemary DeWitt, Bill Irwin
For such a famous movie star, Anne Hathaway has been on the sidelines through her whole career. Her starring role in The Devil Wears Prada was overshadowed by Meryl Streep, she was is always the forgotten member of the Brokeback Mountain quadruplet, and while her contemporaries such as Rachel McAdams and Michelle Williams have won challenging parts and critical acclaim, she has always been stuck labelled as a “Disney princess” because of her early films The Princess Diaries and Ella Enchanted. So it’s no wonder that she was attracted to her role in Rachel Getting Married. The whole film revolves around her – even the other characters are aware of it (much to their frustration).
Hathaway plays the character of the damaged, emotionally unstable Kym, a recovering drug addict who has been released from rehab for the weekend to attend her sister Rachel’s wedding, and in doing so brings up home truths and past demons which the family had hoped to keep out of such a beautiful occasion. However, while Hathaway serves as the catalyst for events, the film is a true ensemble and is about all the guests and party-goers – much like a real wedding.
Director Jonathan Demme and his cinematographer Declan Quinn do a great job creating the atmosphere of a real wedding video. The whole film is shot in a hand-held, home-movie style, with characters often acknowledging the camera and sometimes the other cameras in the room even getting in the shot. However, this style is often at odds with the random bursts of melodrama that Jenny Lumet’s (daughter of the great director Sidney Lumet) screenplay delivers. Demme makes sure that his self-aware filmmaking technique is reigned back for such scenes, so as to allow them to speak for themselves, but even that can’t save misjudged moments such as Kym’s confrontation with her estranged mother (Debra Winger). The skeleton that lies in the closet of the family’s past also seems a little bit over-the-top for such an intimate, otherwise unsentimental film. Once it has been revealed, you start to question how realistic it would be for Kym and Rachel to share the banter that they do.
Such criticisms do little to ruin the great multi-cultural spirit that the entire cast and crew work to create, however. There is no formal “score”, but music is extremely important to the film, which is full of diagetic world music that comes from different sources from the wedding band playing constantly all weekend (in a humorous in-joke) to the groom’s sweet a capella performance of Neil Young’s “Unknown Legend”, and although we don’t meet every guest at the wedding, we observe everyone as Demme’s roaming cameras capture the ever present ensemble cast filling out the scenes like background furniture.
Of the characters that we do become familiar with, however, from Rachel’s groom (TV On The Radio front-man Tunde Adebimpe) and his best man (and the story’s awkwardly forced love-interest for Kym) to Rachel’s best friend and bridesmaid, it is Rosemary DeWitt as the titular bride-to-be, Rachel, and Bill Irwin as her and Kym’s big hearted but oblivious father who particularly stand out. Along with Hathaway, the three perform a great triumvirate of simmering tension and convincing familial bond. DeWitt especially has a tough role to play as she has to convince us that not only is the doe-eyed, former sweet-natured Disney princess Hathaway a selfish attention-seeker undeserving of such consideration, but also show us why even Rachel herself ignores all else to pander to her sister’s insecurities.
Which of course, as the film itself does, brings it back to Anne Hathaway, who obviously saw the career-changing potential in her character, at one moment delivering a icy, deadpan quip and at another suffering an hysterical breakdown, and she approaches it with relish. It is not an easy part to play, and to her credit, Hathaway doesn’t shy away from the unlikeable aspects of Kym’s character, of which there are many. The screenplay asks us to do as her family does, and if we can’t like her or understand her, we at least have to accept her. And it is this spirit that will resonate with you long after you have left the cinema. The film may have its flaws, but it is so forgiving and understanding of the flaws of its inhabitants that you can’t help but respond in kind.
VERDICT: *** out of *****
